Reflections On A Site Build, Part 1: Goals

gaboosh — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 13:42:45 +0000

A quick peek at the Wayback Machine will provide some insight into my every-changing goals when it comes to this website. From the time my father presented me with the gaboosh.com domain as a gift in 1999, into the Schaffzinino’s Multimedia Kitchen phase, through the gaboosh.media years, until now, I’ve always thought of this space as an important indication of where my head is from a career standpoint. So when it came time to reevaluate my goals in terms of what I do on a daily basis, naturally I had to look to my website for a corresponding change.

I had a few things I wanted to accomplish:

Setting Flash Aside Momentarily

I’ve built plenty of sites, apps, and other widgets in Flash/ActionScript. And while there are certainly a multitude of ways I could present my online self in Flash, I decided it was time for a new challenge. Combine that with the fact that I wanted an iPhone/iPad friendly site and I decided to jump in to jQuery as my main development framework for the presentation layer. I’ll be keeping my portfolio (once that gets a facelift) in Flash, however, so that my AS3 skills are properly represented here.

Unifying Feeds

Partially inspired by Mr. Daly‘s Flavors.me built site, I realized it was time to start unifying all of my disparate feeds. I use Twitter and this blog for my ramblings, Flickr, Tweetphoto, and TwitPic for my image sharing, LinkedIn for my resumé, and a slew of location based services for my geotracking. Isn’t it about time these all lived in one place. Besides, the site IS called Barely Concealed Narcissism. Maybe there should be more about ME.

Updated Design

I’m not really a designer. I like to think I have some basic design chops, but nothing compared to the art directors I’ve worked with over the years. In a few weeks I begin working towards an MFA in Communication Design, but the focus there will be more theoretical than practical. That said, I wanted to keep the look and feel simple and clean, inspired by my latest obsession (to which Mr. Norton can attest), 60′s style screen prints.

I admit that it took a few weeks of thinking to figure out what this new site would be. It actually came to me in the shower one morning. How’s that for a too-much-information-cliché? I sat down that weekend (the wife was out of town) and cranked this out in 48 hours or so. It took a few hours of tweaks afterwards to clean it up (more on that soon), but here we are.

I’d love to hear your reactions. Naturally, since this is a site about me, I plan on sharing my thoughts. In the interest of attention spans, I’ll take care of that in Part 2.

New Job

gaboosh — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:06:27 +0000

I’ll be starting at LocaModa in Cambridge on Apr 1. Pretty excited for the opportunity.

Digital out of home (DOOH) will provide exposure to a lot of the technologies I enjoy working with, and through a delivery mechanism that’s growing in popularity and innovation.

For more on what LocaModa does, check their site and blog.

LocaModa's Jumbli game playing in Times Square

Barely Concealed Narcissism » employment

Reflections On A Site Build, Part 1: Goals

New Job